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Tuesday, July 6, 2010
The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
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CHANDLER DAVIS I
A modern Red Hunt
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ANDREW LAPIN
EDITOR IN CHIEF
RYAN KARTJE
MANAGING EDITOR
ALEX SCHIFF
EDITORIAL PAGE EDII
DR
Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily's editorial board.
All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.
Leave no worker behind
Career retraining programs are vital to recovery
Just when Michigan workers were starting to stand on their own two
feet, their knees are being knocked out from underneath them once
again. This time, it's by the federal government, which recently cut
its funding to the No Worker Left Behind program. Amid all the talk of
wasteful or unnecessary spending by governments on all levels, it's both
surprising and abhorrent to see the scalpel fall on a program with such a
remarkable record of success. Not only should federal funding be restored,
the project - and others like it - should be expanded across the country.
The United States Supreme Court is
once again deciding how much free-
dom to permit to all Americans. Old
rules do not apply, it seems, in the age
of the "war on terror." Our government
needs a whole new set of restrictions
on speech and advocacy: See the deci-
sion in Holder v. Humanitarian Law
Project, handed down June 21. For
some of us, this is nostalgia.
When we left-wing intellectuals
were being fired in the 1950s, I remem-
ber a snooty characterization by a
senior administrator at the University.
Let us call him Dean Abbott (I prefer
not to disclose his identity, but anyway
I don't recall his name). He assured a
meeting of the faculty that they didn't
need to waste their sympathy for those
who might be attacked in the Red
Hunt, for "these people are not impor-
taut."
As a 27-year-old neophyte scientist,
I didn't stand up and argue that I was
so important. I did right not to. The
firings, and the Congressional panels
and prison sentences that accompa-
nied them, were important all right
- but, for the most part, not because
they punished our dissent. The main
impact of these actions was that they
put a chill on dissent by everyone, not
just activists or radicals. The censors
believed that the quenching of criti-
cism was far more important than the
loss of our services to American aca-
demia. It wasn't even the loss of our
criticism that was so consequential
- far more important was the loss of
criticism from our colleagues who
remained in academia, but muted.
Later, when I refused to testify
before one of the Red-hunting com-
mittees of Congress, the press had the
idea that I was defending my right to
free speech. This was so oversimpli-
fied of an assumption that they had
nearly missed my entire point: For-
mer Congressman Rit Francis Clardy
(R-Mich.)'s committee was intimidat-
ing my fellow citizens, who were more
important because there were more
of them. I thought the courts ought to
outlaw the intimidation, so I chose to
defy it. The only way the courts could
have kept me out of prison, I figured,
was to rule that the committees were
overstepping their authority. The
courts didn't rule as I had hoped - not
until a decade later.
When I began my prison term, I
cockily put it this way to a reporter:
"Six months of my life is not too much
to give in the service of my country."
Another reporter asked me at the last
minute, "If you're willing to serve six
months in prison, why did you appeal
your conviction?" He really didn't get
it! I explained, as the federal marshals
whisked me away, "If I had won at the
Supreme Court, the hearings would
have been outlawed. That would have
been a bigger contribution." It would
have protected not my freedom of
speech, which is no more important
than any other individual's, but the
freedom of everyone's speech and
exchange of views, by which demo-
cratic decision can occur - without
which it can not.
And here we are again. Fifty-one
yearsaftercthe McCarran Internal
Security Act (1950), which estab-
lished the Subversive Activities Con-
trol Board, we now have the so-called
"Fatriot Act." Fifty-one years after
the Supreme Court ruled against
Lloyd Barenblatt and me in 1959,
the Supreme Court rules against
Ralph Fertig and upholds a ban on
the knowing provision of material
support or resources to a terrorist
organization, even if the support is
to further peaceful, nonviolent advo-
cacy or humanitarian aid.
We are supposed to shrug: after all,
some of the thousands whose right to
due process is annulled are probably
guilty of something. If Ralph Fertig is
prevented from helping some Kurds,
even though he offers them no weap-
ons but only teaching of non-violence,
why worry? Some of them are suppos-
edly guilty of something. But Dean
Abbott, however unfair his scorn was,
had it right in spite of himself. The
targets of political repression may not
be important. The repression is much
more important than any individual
target,becauseitis an attackonthelife
of society itself.
As my fellow defendant Pete Seeger
puts it, "When will they ever learn?"
Will it take the Supreme Court another
ten years and another score of cases to
re-learn what it finally came to see in
the 1970s?
Chandler Davis is a former
University mathematics professor.
No Worker Left Behind is a
government-funded initiative
to retrain Michigan workers for
in-demand jobs in high-growth
industries. To date, the program
has trained and/or retrained
131,833 people for new careers.
But on July 1, the program will be
forced to restrict its enrollment
due to lack of funding from the
federal government. The major-
ity of the program's remaining
money will go toward ensuring
all workers already enrolled are
able to finish their training.
Diversifying Michigan's econ-
omy is absolutely essential to the
state's recovery. Ensuring that
the entire state isn't dependent
on one sector, as it has been on
the auto industry, is a prerequi-
site to long-term economic sus-
tainability. By funding training
for a vast array of workers, the
program made sure there was a
skilled, diverse Michigan labor
force ready to be hired by in-state
companies in all fields. With-
out NWLB, many workers will
remain trained solely for jobs that
simply aren't coming back.
Of the 57,855 workers who
have completed training, over 75
percent have retained old jobs or
found new ones, according to the
Department of Energy, Labor and
Economic Growth. This program,
by all accounts, has had a signifi-
cant positive impact on Michigan
workers and employers at a time
when the unemployment rate sits
at 13.7 percent as of April 2010,
according to the U.S. Bureau of
Labor Statistics. Several news
outlets, including The New York
Times, have highlighted an even
more troubling problem: Compa-
nies are looking for workers to
hire, but they can't find enough
with the skills and training they
are looking for. Such findings
demonstrate the clear and irre-
futable need for continued fund-
ing and support of NWLB.
This success indicates that
the federal government - which
has no balanced budget require-
ment - should be expanding the
program, not undermining it. By
funding training for struggling
workers, NWLB sets up a pipeline
for companies in high-growth
' industries to hire in-state work-
ers, making it easier for employ-
ers and employees to match up
quickly. This is a program that
any economy could use in both
good times and bad, as it cuts
down on the frictional unemploy-
ment that results from the inher-
ently time-consuming nature of
a job search. The federal govern-
ment should spearhead a national
initiative to set up similar pro-
grams across the country.
No Worker Left Behind has
been one of the rare gems in
Michigan's economic policy
over the past several years. But
with the deterioration of state
tax revenues over the course of
the prolonged downturn, federal
funding is increasingly needed to
keep the program going. Unfor-
tunately for Michigan's suffering
workers, the message from Wash-
ington has been, "Tough luck."
Sometimes words are actions. Not many
countries in the world are willing to call the
Russians occupiers. Just the Georgians,
and now the Americans."
- Alexander Rondeli, President of the Georgian Foundation for Strategic
and International Studies, as reported by The New York Times yesterday.
EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS:
Nicholas Clift, Emma Jeszke, Joe Stapleton, Rachel Van Gilder
*I